On July 26 the City of Tshwane was cast into a spotlight when thousands of municipal workers downed tools and took to the streets over a 5.4% wage increase that lasted four months.
From the start of the municipal strike action, allegedly led by affiliates of the SA Municipal Workers Union (Samwu), the city executive mayor Cilliers Brink insisted that the city could not afford the R600 million needed to honour the agreement they had made with the union the year before.
During the four months residents had to bear the brunt after service delivery that included bus services, waste collection, water and electricity outages, fixing of potholes and streetlights, collapsed.
This resulted in bags of uncollected waste and illegal dumping sites across the city, while property owners were subjected to overflowing bins in their yards.
The area in and around the Rooihuiskraal dumping site had become a sorry sight as a result of the ongoing strike that left the site full and as a result residents are leaving rubbish on the road leading to the facility as well as in Lenchen Road.
This prompted residents of the close-knit suburb to roll up their sleeves and clean up the garbage themselves.
The strike took an ugly turn when violence broke out during the protests, leading to more than 250 vehicles of the cash-strapped municipality being torched, buildings and infrastructure being damaged, which further stretched the metro's budget.
The ongoing strike also denied patients life-saving health care after some facilities were forced to close.
The Pretoria News further reported accusations of sabotage, conspiracy to kidnap and intent to cause grievous bodily harm.
In August,a month after the strike began, a municipal worker known to this publication but whose name has been withheld to protect him, was apparently attacked in the morning for resuming his duties.
It was reported that the worker from the Water Distribution sub-section was on his way to refuel a city’s plumber's truck at Belle Ombre and collect his team at the corner of Du Toit and Dr Savage Street Pretoria Central when he was attacked by five men.
The strike was further marred by a series of violent incidents, with strikers allegedly intimidating colleagues who refused to take part in the protest action which has also impacted negatively in the delivery of services.
This resulted in the DA in Tshwane laying criminal charges at the Brooklyn police station against members of Samwu who participated in the “unlawful” strike action against the municipality.
The party accused the striking workers of, among other allegations, sabotage, conspiracy to kidnap and intent to cause grievous bodily harm.
They were also alleging that they had in their possession proof that the protesting employees were conspiring to kidnap Brink’s wife.
In the early days of the strike, city municipal manager Johann Mettler obtained an interdict against the strike, however the workers continued with the action, prompting threats from the city management that they would be identifying those who had taken part, and they could face dismissal.
As a result more than 100 people who took part in an “illegal” and “unprotected” strike received termination letters, which to date have succeeded in leaving them without jobs.
A tug of war between the DA and Samwu ensued, with the DA urging the union to take “immediate and decisive” action against striking municipal employees.
The DA further blamed the union, saying its lack of action was “deeply concerning”.
Samwu continued to deny it had sanctioned the continuous strike action.
In September the metro and two unions, including Samwu and the Independent Municipal and Allied Union (Imatu), met the Local Government Collective Bargaining Council for it to meditate on the ongoing strike; however, the meeting stalled due new arguments introduced by Samwu.
The municipality was seeking an exemption for proposed pay increases that was heard by senior commissioner Eleanor Hambidge, but dismissed Samwu’s application.
The union argued that the City failed to implement the order and instead filed an exemption application and informed its members that the application was months late, noting that the City had known their intention not to pay since March this year.
They also argued that the City of Tshwane submitted its exemption application late – the City’s application is defective because it does not contain all prescribed documents and that the application by the City was not in compliance with the wage and salary collective agreement.
In October the metro insisted that Samwu would foot the bill for damages the metro had been experiencing after two more waste removal trucks were attacked and torched in the city.
The trucks were set alight while heaps of garbage continued to infest street pavements and disrupt the metro’s catch-up plan.
After the city lost the bid to get an exemption to the salary increment they came from the back foot to win one battle against the strikers when the Labour Court granted it a permanent interdict against the unrest.
This threw in some sort of relief by the ruling after the SA Local Government Bargaining Council earlier dismissed its application to be exempted from implementing a wage deal reached on September 15, 2021, as part of a three-year salary and wage agreement.
During the mayhem Brink was forced to fight another gauntlet, calling for his resignation.
He rejected calls to resign from his position from Cope’s Ofentse Moalusi calling him a “disgraceful failure”.
Meanwhile cracks were beginning to show between the DA-led coalition government and ActionSA in Tshwane as the municipal strike continued to cause havoc across the capital.
ActionSA, part of the coalition government, had threatened to take the matter to the management committee to intervene and call on Brink to go back to the negotiation table with the striking workers.
The party was accusing Brink of going back on the 2021 agreement between the city and the workers that pay increases would be implemented.
Also in October the metro was forced to pay employee salaries that were withheld due to the unprotected strike after the Labour Court had ordered the municipality on October 26 to pay the more than 60 employees who had their salaries docked.
This comes after metro workers who are members of the Independent Municipal and Allied Trade Union (Imatu) were only paid 75% of their salaries.
Now the city is working on a catch-up programme for the backlog to restore its services after Brink announced on November 13 that the strike had ended.
“The strike is largely over in the capital city. Of course, there might still be isolated instances of violence and intimidation … but most folks are back at work. Most of the buses are back on their routes, and now the very difficult work begins of clearing the backlog, and we have to acknowledge that there is still a backlog.”
The announcement came after Brink and the two unions were forced to go back to the negotiation table.
This after the Commission for Conciliation, Mediation and Arbitration (CCMA) invoked the Section 150 intervention to mediate the strike.
The two unions called on their members to return to work and halt the strike: “We unconditionally denounce all acts of intimidation and violence, which have resulted in the damage to the City of Tshwane’s property, the interruption of municipal services and the negative impact on the health, safety and wellness of staff including the health, safety and security of the residents of the City of Tshwane. The parties wish to call on all workers to return to work in a bid to restore normality to the municipality.”
Pretoria News